We coach, develop and work alongside leaders and teams to shift ideas on leadership and provide the skills and tools needed to grow teams.
Most of the leaders we get work with are pretty good leaders. They realise that they need to have a successful team to help them and their business succeed, and as such, invest time and effort in their team. This an honourable intent and typically means you are better than average at leading people. But kicking-off a few initial team development or team building sessions are never enough.
There is a lot written on what makes teams successful – just Google it – it makes for some interesting reading. There are certainly a lot of skilled practitioners out there doing good work who have strong advice about what helps. However, research showing causality between a specific factor or condition and high or improved performance is harder to find.
Heading to a Neuroleadership Summit in New York (for the second year in a row) felt a little hard to justify. But there is nothing quite like it for experiencing the zeitgeist of a fairly progressive segment of corporate America. With Harvard Professor Amy Edmondson’s book “Teaming” promptly sold out, and standing room only at the “Neuroscience of Effective Teams” even David Rock expressed surprise at the level of interest in team.
Imagine if we could just give others a ‘trust me’ potion. Life would be so much easier!
Trust is the elixir, the magic potion for relationships between people. Once deep trust is established great things can happen. So, what are the benefits of achieving high levels of trust? Stephen MR Covey, author of ‘The Speed of Trust’ claims trust has wide ranging benefits for organisations.
As we are about to see some elite international rugby being played again with the All Blacks taking on Wales, I pondered what lessons we can learn from one of the best teams in the business. There are some things that are just plain obvious.
Our search for the truth about what makes great teams has led us to do a review of the research and read stacks of books written by academics and team experts proclaiming they have the answer. It’s a bit like a search for the holy grail. There is a different model and list of key factors at every turn.